Wednesday, 26 February 2014

This blog, written ­by Dr. Margaretha de Looze (researcher and lecturer at Utrecht University, the Netherlands), discussesHBSC's study on cannabis use among adolescents in Europe. The post is part of the Wikichild series on Adolescent health, examining cross-national changes in frequent adolescent cannabis use (40+ times consumed over life-time at age 15) over time and relating these trends to societal wealth, family affluence and gender.

Cannabis use among adolescents in wealthy European countries is decreasing, while in poorer European countries it is on the rise. In particular, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, and FYR Macedonia experienced increased cannabis consumption amongst adolescents between 2002 and 2010. These findings come from a recent publication by members of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study and research network.

Decrease in wealthy countries

This analysis, from 14 members of the international WHO collaborative study, looked at trends over time in frequent adolescent cannabis use (40+ times consumed over lifetime at age 15) in 2002, 2006 and 2010. We found that frequent cannabis use has decreased among adolescents in the more affluent western and southern European and North American countries. In some of these countries, the decreases were dramatic. For example, in 2010, frequent cannabis use among German boys decreased from 6.6% in 2002 to 1.2%, and among Dutch girls it decreased from 4.1% in 2002 to 1.5%.

This decline in frequent cannabis use in the wealthier countries of Europe is consistent with a general decrease in a range of other risk behaviours among these young people. In many of these countries, adolescent tobacco use, alcohol consumption, sexual risk behaviors and fighting have also declined.

How can this decline in adolescent risk behaviours be explained? One possible answer lies in substance use policies. Legislations to limit underage access and to restrict illicit substance use in general are enforced in all Western countries, with stricter substance use prevention policies coming into action in recent years. Additionally, a stronger focus on educating young people on the harmful effects of substance use has changed social norms leading to lower tolerance and acceptance of substance use among teenagers.

Increase in Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, and FYR Macedonia

In contrast to Western European countries, frequent cannabis use stabilized or increased between 2002 and 2010 in the poorer Eastern European countries. For example, frequent cannabis use among boys in Latvia increased from 1.1% to 3.3%, with Russian girls showing an increase from 0.2% to 0.8%. Although the rates in these countries are still lower than those in Western Europe, the increasing trends over time are steady - and thus alarming. Adolescents from less affluent countries seem to be adopting consumption patterns consistent with their peers in richer countries. The growing wealth of Eastern European countries appears to have fostered adolescent substance use due to the increased availability of substances and the emergence of a flourishing youth culture. However, this apparent effect of national wealth seems to have leveled off in Western European countries, potentially due to the implementation of stricter cannabis use policies.

Importantly, adolescent cannabis use appears not only to have ‘trickled down’ from richer to developing countries, but also from more affluent to less affluent youth within countries. While cannabis consumption emerged as a central component of the ‘Bohemian’ ideals of the 1960’s and 1970’s and was first popularized by middle class youth, it now appears to have spread to the youth population of a lower socioeconomic status.

Girls do not catch up with boys

While one might have expected that gender differences would narrow between 2002 and 2010, as a result of girls’ and women’s continuing liberation, cannabis use has actually become (even) more characteristic of males during this period. This rather surprising finding might be explained by the de-normalization of cannabis use over the past decade. While cannabis use was widespread and quite ‘normalized’ among well-adjusted, non-risk-taking young people at the end of the 20th century, the recent declining rates may have changed young people’s perception of cannabis use as de-normalized and highly risky behaviour. As risk-taking increases social status among boys but less so for girls, it may be easier for boys to remain part of a cannabis-using scene.

Although it is reassuring that, overall, cannabis use has decreased for both genders, male adolescents have always been, and remain, at higher risk for excessive use, dependence and associated health problems.

What next?

Future studies should closely monitor tendencies for ‘trickle down’ and ‘de-normalization’ effects in frequent cannabis use as fundamental indicators of substance use and health in adolescent populations. Currently, data for the new HBSC cycle are being collected in more than 40 countries in Europe and North America. Within a year, we will be able to conclude whether the observed trends have continued into 2014

The HBSC Study

The HBSC research network is an alliance of researchers who collaborate to collect data on the health, well-being, health behaviours, social environments and economic contexts of adolescents. The HBSC study is currently conducted in 44 countries across Europe and North America, and the network includes over 450 experts from a wide range of disciplines. Members of the HBSC network collaborate to develop a standardized questionnaire, which is used to survey nationally representative samples of school-aged children in each participating country. HBSC's research themes currently include: chronic conditions, eating and dieting, electronic media, family culture, gender, medicine-use, peer culture, physical activity, positive health, puberty, risk behaviours, school, sexual health, social inequality, and violence and injuries.

- Dr. Margaretha de LoozeResearcher and lecturer at Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Thursday, 20 February 2014

Open data is data that
can be freely used, re-used and distributed by anyone, only subject to (at the
most) the requirement that users attribute the data and that they make their
work available to be shared as well.

Hosted and supported by the Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Data Day Hackathon is an annual day where people around the world celebrate open
data by hacking, holding forums, analysing data and hosting workshops. Going on
since 2010, the event aims at raising awareness for the open data debate by showing
support for and encouraging the adoption of open data policies by the world's
local, regional and national governments.

How does it work?

Be it online or in person, if you’re interested in taking part in
the activities of the Open Data Day you just have to go to the wiki page, register your event and tag it onto the world map. The
organisers are centralising the local initiatives for each city, so people can boost
the sharing ideas experience.

Rules of the
game

Events for
the day can be of many kinds, they have only to follow these principles set by
the organizers:

Events
should happen on the same day
(This year it´ll be happening on the 22nd February)

Events
should be open, inclusive and welcome diversity (epistemic,
geographic, socio-demographic, of language and gender)

Anyone can organise alocal event (the person just has to add its name to the relevant city
on the wiki list)

People can hack on anything that involves open data(it could be a local or global app, a visualisation, proposing a
standard for common data sets, scraping data from a government website to make
it available for others or even creating your own data catalogue of government
data)

People are invited to share ideas and experiences (each event should come up with at least one demo,
brainstorm, proposal, to share online with the Open Data Day crowd)

Wednesday, 19 February 2014

This blog is byICFJ Knight International Journalism Fellow Miguel Paz a Chilean journalist and founder and CEO of Poderopedia, a data journalism website that highlights links among Chile’s business and political elites. This post is part of the Wikiprogress series on Data and Statistics in the lead up to Open Data Day on 22 February.

It’s time to transform open data from a trendy concept among policy wonks and news nerds into something tangible to everyday life for citizens, businesses and grassroots organisations. Here are some ideas to help us get there:

As Hammer wrote in a blog post for the Harvard Business Review, while
the "opening" has generated excitement from development experts,
donors, several government champions, and the increasingly mighty geek
community, the hard reality is that much of the public has been left behind, or
tacked on as an afterthought. Let`s get out of the building and start working
for the end user.

3. Show, don't tell

Regular folks don't know what “open data” means. Actually, they probably
don't care what we call it and don't know if they need it. Apple’s Steve Jobs said
that a lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to
them. We need to stop telling them they need it and start showing them why they
need it, through actionable user experience.

4. Make it relevant to people’s daily lives, not just
to NGOs and policymakers’ priorities

A study of the use of open data and transparency in Chile showed the top
10 uses were for things that affect their lives directly for better or for
worse: data on government subsidies and support, legal certificates,
information services, paperwork. If the data doesn't speak to priorities at the
household or individual level, we've lost the value of both the “opening” of
data, and the data itself.

5. Invite the public into the sandbox

We need to give people “better tools to not only consume, but to create
and manipulate data,” says my colleague Alvaro Graves, Poderopedia’s semantic
web developer and researcher. This is what Code for America does, and it’s also
what happened with the advent of Web 2.0, when the availability of better
tools, such as blogging platforms, helped people create and share content.

6. Realise that open data are like QR codes

Everyone talks about open data the way they used to talk about QR
codes--as something ground breaking. But as with QR Codes, open data only
succeeds with the proper context to satisfy the needs of citizens. Context is
the most important thing to funnel use and success of open data as a tool for
global change.

7. Make open data sexy and pop, like Jess3.comGeeks became popular because they made useful and cool things that could
be embraced by end users. Open data geeks need to stick with that program.

8. Help journalists embrace open data

Jorge Lanata, a famous Argentinian journalist who is now being targeted
by the Cristina Fernández administration due to his unfolding of government
corruption scandals, once said that 50 percent of the success of a story or
newspaper is assured if journalists like it.

That’s true of open data as well. If journalists understand its value
for the public interest and learn how to use it, so will the public. And if
they do, the winds of change will blow. Governments and the private sector will
be forced to provide better, more up-to-date and standardised data. Open data
will be understood not as a concept but as a public information source as
relevant as any other. We need to teach Latin American journalists to be part
of this.

9. News nerds can help you put your open data to
good use

In order to boost the use of open data by journalists we need news
nerds,who can
teach colleagues how open data through brings us high-impact storytelling that
can change public policies and hold authorities accountable.

News nerds can also help us with “institutionalizing data literacy
across societies” as Hammer puts it. ICFJ Knight International Journalism
Fellow and digital strategist Justin Arenstein calls these folks "mass
mobilizers" of information. Alex Howard “points to these groups because
they can help demystify data, to make it understandable by populations and not
just statisticians.”

I call them News Ninja Nerds, accelerator task forces that can foster
innovations in news, data and transparency in a speedy way, saving governments
and organizations time and a lot of money. Projects like ProPublica’s Dollars For Docs are great examples of what can be achieved if you mix FOIA, open data
and the will to provide news in the public interest.

10. Rename open data

Part of the reasons people don't embrace concepts such as open data is
because it is part of a lingo that has nothing to do with them. No empathy
involved. Let's start talking about people's right to know and use the data
generated by governments. As Tim O'Reilly puts it: "Government as a
Platform for Greatness," with examples we can relate to, instead of dead
.PDF's and dirty databases.

11. Don't expect open data to substitute for
thinking or reporting

Investigative Reporting can benefit from it. But “but there is no
substitute for the kind of street-level digging, personal interviews, and
detective work” great journalism projects entailed, says David Kaplan in a
great post entitled, Why
Open Data is Not Enough.

“The increasing access to data creates, more than ever, a need to make
sense of disparate pieces of information,” said Paul Radu, executive director
of the Sarajevo-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. “It is
the mix of local and global information, the combination of local shoe-leather
reporting and leaps across borders through databases, that will make the
difference on the long run.”

The
post originally appeared on the The International Journalists’ Network’s
site, IJNet.org. IJNet helps professional, citizen
and aspiring journalists find training, improve their skills and make
connections. IJNet is produced by the International Center for Journalists in
seven languages — Arabic, Chinese, English, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and
Spanish — with a global team of professional editors. Subscribe to IJNet’s free,
weekly newsletter. You can also follow IJNet on Twitter or
like IJNet on Facebook.

Questions asked included what type of data can we use/should we use to measure women's civic and political participation; whether attitudinal data can be used more systematically to better document women's civic and political engagement; how new technologies can be used to better map women's collective action; examples of women's collective action that resulted in an improvement of their lives; and more!

The discussion culminated with 88 comments, below are some highlights. To see all the comments made, please visit the discussion page.

Where are some of the data gaps and issues ?

In the case of Chile, there is some gender data in terms of female representation in the electoral system, but no statistics on attitudes to female political participation and agency

There is a lack of indicators on women's collective action

There are issues of sisues of coverage and frequency for attitudinal surveys. We need a global push for harmonisation on key questions such as attitudes towards female political participation - and this includes more political will too!

Apart from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) which collects data on women in parliament, there is no equivalent for the sub-national level

For PARIS21, we are a the beginning of the ideal sequence (illustrated as per the diagram below); there might be some administrative open data, but it is a question of priority setting to address the multiple demands and limited resources.

The ideal sequence for statisticans to produce data on women's civic and political participation would be as follows. Once the feedback part done, the cycle would start back again with the integration of this data in programmes:

"As the OECD is increasingly using subjective sources of information like Gallup (or Latinobarómetro in the case of Latin America), we should be able to build better indicators for identifying political preferences by gender and understand better these contrasts."

- Rolando

What type of data do we need?

We need a focus on how women use digital platforms for political activities - we need surveys to understand who the users of such platforms are

We need data on vulnerable women: in the case of Latin America, women of Indigenous and African descent face the greatest barriers to political participation

There are some examples of projects that focus on attitudinal information: Through the SWMENA project (Status of Women in the Middle East and North Africa), country-specific but comparable surveys are produced on how women in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen see themselves as members of society.

Some unanswered questions

Can big data and ICT technologies bridge those data gaps?

What is the role of national and international institutes in that process?

How can the EU and Latin America cooperate on women's political participation, amongst other issues?

"It would be interesting to also see whether we can better capture what women's civic participation can do for the development of communities in general, and for women in particular. The collective action for women may have more impact in that respect. Are there any initiatives to capture that impact anywhere?" - Keiko Nowacka

Monday, 10 February 2014

INVITATION

Experiences in Latin America: kindergarten, primary, secondary/technical and university

from 09:00, 11 February until 22:00, 25 February 2014

La OCDE Centro de México, SAVISO, IEP, OECD Education, Wikiprogress
and Wikiprogress América Latina would
like to invite you to join the discussion about “Education that promotes well-being”.
This online discussion provides a unique opportunity to reflect and exchange
best practices, research and experiences on the topic.

The discussion will focus on the following questions:

In Latin America, what does it mean to have an
education that promotes well-being and improves quality of life? Do we need to
go beyond the concept of human capital?

What are the characteristics of an education model that promotes well-being?

What community programmes, social experiments
and public policies are currently being conducted in Latin America that help
foster education models which promote well-being

What extra efforts are needed in order to
construct education models that promote well-being? Who should be responsible
for designing and implementing them?

We invite you to leave your
comments in Spanish, Portuguese, English or French under the section entitled
“Contribuye” on the discussion webpage. To participate, click here

This is the link to the page: bit.ly/1fohFHx and the hashtags in Twitter are #teachlearnand#EducaciónDeCalidad

This blog, written by Wikigender Coordinator Estelle Loiseau, gives some highlights of the Wikigender online discussion on "Data Gaps on Gender Equality", which in its second week focused on violence against women (VAW).* The discussion continued last week on where has progress been made, where the gaps are and where improvements can be made in terms of data onviolence against women(69 comments!) Here below are some highlights from the discussion. Please go to the discussion pagefor more details.

Where are some of the data gaps and issues ?

There are many data gaps at sub-regional level

There is a definition issue when collecting data: what is violence? it depends on the cultural context, especially when talking about "non-physical violence"

The absence of reliable data is also political (it is a question of priority)

"Besides technical obstacles to scientific data collection, absence of (reliable) data is often political too: it can be an indicator that the issue is not considered a political priority. Despite the importance of (comparable) data to better understand the phenomenon and to provide evidence for legislative and politic responses, significant gaps remain - both at national and regional/international levels."

- Sarah Werner - The World Future Counci

What type of data do we need?

We need to use attitudinal data, for example on adolescent girls' perceptions of sexual violence and harassment

We need more data on what kind of programmes are able to have an impact on life outcomes for girls

We must continue to establish indicators based on administrative data (UNECE lead)

Both administrative and survey data tell us important but different information on prevalence of violence estimates. They complement each other in that survey data gives the prevalence and incidence, while administrative data is important for the reporting of violence.

"I think we need to understand more about how adolescent women perceive sexual violence and harassment. I have a feeling that we do not enough, especially in light of new media and technology which allow new channels." - Sophie Walsh

Amber Peterman shared an article about a new study "Tip of the Iceberg: Reporting and Gender-Based Violence in Developing Countries"

And many more!

"The FRA survey interviewed 42,000 women in the 28 EU Member States based on a representative, random sample of respondents. The survey will provide data on physical, sexual and psychological violence against women, sexual harassment and stalking."

Worldwide there are 140 million women and girls currently living with the irreversible physical and emotional trauma affects caused by female genital mutilation (FGM). Each year, a further three million girls endure the practice. According to the World Health Organization, FGM involves the full or partial removal of the female genitalia, performed most frequently by untrained traditional practitioners. In approximately 15 per cent of all global cases this involves fully sewing the female genitalia closed. There are no health benefits for women and girls. When “cutters” without medical training perform FGM the procedure is often carried out without anaesthetic or sterilisation. Unsurprisingly, many girls die through shock from the pain, trauma or excessive bleeding. A Deep Rooted Social Norm This begs the question - why do it? FGM is a deeply rooted social norm enforced by community expectations around women and girls. As with the type of mutilation practised, the reasons why FGM is done depends on the context. For some it is linked with the idea of cleanliness. For others, it is about enhancing beauty or upholding religion. It is worth noting though that FGM is not prescribed by any of the major religions or supported by any religious texts. Most frequently, FGM is about controlling women’s sexuality – for example, preserving a girl’s virginity or stopping “promiscuous” behaviour. What is apparent through all the different rationalisations is that FGM is considered a necessary part of raising a woman and girl properly. To opt out is to risk girls being rejected from the community or never being able to find a husband, which for many outweighs any health risks – including the possibility of death. Progress is Being Made The reality that FGM violates women’s and girls’ rights and perpetuates gender inequality is gaining momentum and progress is being achieved. In 2003, the 6th February was announced as the International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation. This was followed in 2012 with a UN General Assembly resolution that condemned harmful practices to women and girls, in particular FGM. Currently 24 African nations where FGM is practiced have prohibited the practice by law or constitutional decree. However – while important – legislative change, UN resolutions, or one individual acting alone cannot shift entrenched social norms. What is needed is for the entire community to work together to decide to abandon the practice. NGOs such as Tostan and the UNFPA-UNICEF joint programme “Accelerating Change” have proven just how effective this approach can be. These organisations focus on working directly with local communities, including traditional and religious leaders, to enable them to reflect critically on the practice and make a collective choice to publically abandon FGM. Merely condemning the practice can risk creating hostility and driving it underground. The results speak for themselves. Tostan and UNFPA-UNICEF’s work combined has reached over 18,000 communities in 15 countries; representing over 8 million people that have renounced FGM. What Next? By engaging with communities and enabling them to lead their own movements for change, entrenched social norms can and are starting to shift. We need to build on this momentum and ensure that resources reach organisations that are connected to communities and are able and willing to engage over the long-term to bring about the deeper, more systemic change needed. We can also learn from these best practices and apply them to other demanding gender equality issues such as early marriage, violence against women, and women’s inheritance and land rights. Positive social transformation is possible but it needs to come “from the ground up”.

Wow, this is impressive - 48 comments in the first week of the discussion!This not only shows high interest, but also gives an idea of the importance of the topic. Last week we heard from you on where has progress been made in the area of data on gender equality since the establishment of the MDGs in 2000, as well as where the gaps are and where improvements can be made.So, where do we stand?

We can say that participants agreed that there has been progress, notably in the area of sex-disaggregated and gender-sensitive data (but with important limitations) and also in terms of the quality, analysis and dissemination of gender statistics. However, more efforts are needed in several areas, for example regarding the data collection at country level and in certain specific sectors like agriculture or aquaculture and fisheries. Also, a number of new areas of research and priority areas were brought to the fore. Let's take a look in detail...

Data issues mentioned

Comparability of data at EU level, within OECD countries and beyond, within and across regions

Common standards, harmonised data and definitions

Coverage in terms of countries, type of policy and time trends (e.g. for indicators on policies that promote women's socio-economic empowerment)

Lack of continuity between surveys

Data gaps in access to finance and land, and data gaps in agriculture, among others

Capacity building of National Statistics Offices

Many surveys are not gender-sensitive, e.g. in agriculture

Data demand/use needs to be enhanced

"When it comes to data on entrepreneurship, it seems that data collection is greatly impaired by problems of definitions. There are no agreed definitions of what 'entrepreneurship' means, although it is regarded as a driver for social inclusion, empowerment and growth." - Anne Laure Humbert

New areas of research and suggestions

Time-use: to better understand women's participation in the labour market and the balance of family and work responsibilities

Unpaid work: to make sure that women's contribution in the area of care is accounted for in the economic measures

Social norms: to better understand the power imbalances at household level, which have an impact on women's empowerment at society level

Fiscal policy: to better recognise women's contribution to the economy, one could disaggregate taxpayers' data by sex

Technology: to develop a measurement framework to evaluate empowerment within technology initiatives where women are central players (e.g. in sectors such as clean cooking)

"ECLAC (...) has been key in moving forward with time use surveys and in that sense achieving comparability inasmuch as possible. This is creating the possibility to use these surveys to construct satellite accounts that can serve for policy design, but also micro simulation and other uses." - Elizabeth Villagomez

Priority areas

Earning gaps, including from self employment

Unpaid work

Informal work, especially with a focus on poor women

Systematic inclusion of age and sex in data collection, including old age

"We need more countries to collect data on informal employment (...), including on specific categories of informal workers such as domestic workers, home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers and we need data on the earnings of the self employed." - Joann Vanek, WIEGO

To improve data quality, availability and coverage, participants emphasised: South-South cooperation and support from donors and international agencies; more political will for gender equality (e.g. Africa); strong advocacy for new research areas and priority areas; continued capacity building at country level; systematic inclusion of data at country level in global reports; national action plans; and more.

Many examples of initiatives and programmes were mentioned, including: PARIS21's data revolution; HBSC's data collection work on the health and well-being of adolescents; a measurement framework for monitoring equality and human rights in Great Britain by the UK's Equality and Human Rights Commission; the OECD Gender Data Portal; Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index; and many more!